PART III of GERANIUM

You could see a reflection in the glass

Just for an instant it was there

You haven’t slept for days

‘It was him, in front of all the books, it was a flash’

A big boat

In the rain

Filling with water

Sailing out into the horizon and sinking into the ocean

All the time in the world

We will spend it fighting

Fighting and dancing

Reach up

Up and out

The higher we reach the closer to the dream of Patti Smith we get to

Geraniums represent friendship and folly

No they don’t they represent me, I am the Geranium of this house

The Geranium Boy who goes out to burn tall buildings

Why do so many of your bones creak when you move?

Is it because you constantly try to turn into a Eucalyptus tree?

Keeping your eyes to the sky for two Magpies

Which direction did you come from?

Does it matter? We all fall south and we all move north,

Crescents and Obelisks are forever on my mind

A boy called Leigh

I was 24 years old

I had never been bought flowers

A pair of white underwear was the conclusion

You were my secret

You caught your boat

I should have burnt the wharf

Maybe you should leave the house?

And build a tower dedicated to Rimbaud

No, Fuck Rimbaud…

Build a tower to the corpse of Wordsworth

The dye is running down your legs

This isn’t dye

This is blood

It comes from Africa, from history

I think, maybe, we should break up

Don’t get angry

I can never understand you when you get emotional

From now on it’s just us trying hard to live our lives trying hard to live at the very edges of existence

While being as happy as possible

You wish what you read was true

You wish all this were possible

You could maybe understand something then

The love of a man because of his achievements

His nature

His expressions is something that we should look upon as one of the greatest human accomplishments

How we put the same man down is what should be left written in the history books

Funny how this is all in retrospect

If you were asked to sit in the urinal while a man had a piss you’d do it wouldn’t you?

Only if the man played Wagner and read Dickens at the same time, sitting in the filth of humanity while surrounded by the pinnacle is what we should all get used to

What is strange?

The fact we live day by day in the one city

Should we move to Alexandria?

We could watch the empire fall

Could you hear the sweet harmonies?

No, you were dreaming

I guess they were in my head then

The garden was overgrown when we moved here

We just decided to grow with it

And we became the weeds

She Danced all night

She smoked and she drank

At the dance she tore her stockings

At the dance he saw you down to your underwear

He kissed your armpits

He kissed your sideburns

At the dance he smoked pot and talked about his mother

He talked about jeans, Patti Smith and kissed his best friend

At the dance she reached higher, and higher, she was hot

She knew in the morning she would never have another chance

So she flapped her wings and she flew away

She was pregnant with sunlight

You sang to him as he reached into your white underwear

And he knew you were lost

But the water was clear, still

He kissed your sideburns

He kissed your armpits

‘I thought I saw you out in the field, but I realized it was a tree’

‘I must be turning’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Listen, did you see any birds?’

It’s early enough to be cold

But it’s late enough to walk naked

You just want to be one of those lads who constantly needs the squeal of a sax

The bite of a double gin

And someone to listen to his groan of complaint when he wakes up with the winter's frost biting him on the bare arse

And Oscar’s grave he will visit

And promises will be broken with a lipstick kiss

The old trees will maybe notice you

The sound of the subway will escape you

As you walk away

What are your plans for today?

You look up at the ceiling fan and you think of your parents

If you could frame a picture of yourself right now and leave it on a bus

You would want to film the process of it ending as landfill

You want to know that those shoes that took you to the border ended up ok

You want to know that your veins will keep working

You just want to know that everything’s gonna be alright

You asked him where he was going

‘To draw my portrait on the walls of Tanzania, to climb the palm trees of Russia!’

You told him he needed Salvation

‘You need a King! Or just a note book…’

He glows in the dark with everything that he has yet to release

He glows with the languages he speaks in his dreams

He went to the most beautiful Turkish woman he had ever seen

He said ‘Here I have a word, from my dream’

She said it meant ‘Turn Right’

So he did

And he took, his friend

Together you find

To your sweet delight

You are travelling around

A circle, the world, the pupil, the sun,

Chasing your own path

The sphinx, Burroughs, Bullushi, HAHA

You all need Salvation

You all need a princess with a cock

You all need to lay down and think about Egypt

You all need to lean against a New York Parking Meter with a knife against your thigh

You all need to sit on the roof and watch the sunrise with Charlie

You all need to convince the people, c’mon. Convince.

With a Bullwhip and a bathrobe.

Wait for the flash

Wait for the light

And wait for the song

Can you hear the angel?

I know you were bitten

I know you can hear

Auras and halos

Can you see?

The sparks blind you

The beat rises

You are cupping your hands over your ears

Hitting them against your head as fast as a bird attacks

The church burns and a balloon rises off to a country in the East

I will meet you in LaMoux

I will meet you in Paris

She followed him down an alley

She followed him down a road

You wanted to follow her but the river

It over flowed

And then in London

You followed a man into the park

He showed you his treasure chest

Two years later you drove an ambulance

He was your passenger

And your pockets were hard with gold coins

Listen for the train

Listen for what is real to us

The trail might grow cold

There is the phone

You know the number

Look up my name

All old things become extinct

Grandmother, I remember you

I don’t need your gender

Your autobiography

Your continent

CONTINENT OF MUSE (written on the back of your bedroom door)

Where are you?

What is your position?

Are your legs spread open?

Like an artist naked

Seed in the belly

Paint on the floor

You don’t look to the sky anymore, why?

You breed the black sheep to hold the bricks

to disregard

Society holds the loss

A receding hairline and a chipped glass

He will want to keep this dance

Freshly mown grass

A Kiboko whip and a book on Kenyan flowers

Can he live long enough to keep this dance?

You lay on the bed your hand on your stomach

You think of what it was like hymen breaking on the fortunate horse

You think of news reaching you from the old world

The mapmaker thinking of you as he fucked his aging and tired wife

The string section in the airplane as it crashed down

Playing ‘Sympathy for St Michael’

You become naked and you think of a duke

Grease in his hair

Spending his days at the zoo looking at the reptiles while the rain fell on the geraniums outside

You can’t point around the corner on the same day of the festival of the dead

You can’t visit Mexico in November

You should never poetry at sunrise

When drunk on gin

When you know you should be pissing in snow

You can’t fuck him before you’ve eaten lunch

While the Jonquils stare at the tattered leaves of summer You can kiss him and feel the hair that grows from his calves all the way up to his buttocks

Winter is yours

You gave summer to the Ocean

You gave his dark eyes to the sky.

Mountains in the ashtray

Your face is flat on the table

Have the tumours formed yet?

Are the purities of the pond causing your reflection to look white and angelic, divine?

The red wine kicks at your heart

The tiny beating Africa that is within your chest

It calls to you, and you feel it quicken

You want to run but the wine has thickened your head

It is full of grass, dung, dust, and mud

You know where you are, you just don’t know how to get there

Rimbaud’s map found in the pocket of our saviour will help

The lemon tree fell over

And a cat slept where it once stood

The cat was owned by a man who was raised a catholic

Yet he was also an explorer

They called him the Tarantula

He called himself ‘The Kid’

‘Kick out the writers!

Burn the paper the pens and the poets with them!

We no longer need them!

We are fine, we have sex and bourbon and the heat of the sun…’

Today you sit at the spell book of his chest

Tomorrow you will be looking at the light of the boats on the water

The future you have to play with it

Grab it and make it taste the floor of the bar

Show it how things will be

You have to live with the sun through the window

Fading the previous arsehole’s curtains

A picture of an androgynous child on the wall

Holding a violet in their hand

Get over time

Become a stranger

Leave furniture behind

Shame yourself

And change your name to Cecil Raleigh Boaz

Is it a shock for you to realize that love doesn’t exist but in memory?

You feel this electricity don’t you? Your back straightens and the distortion creates a mess with your vision

You realize that you have to run

You have to learn a new trade

In a new country  

Putting flowers in your small room

Getting a new habit that involves charm, cigarettes, and suits

The planets are kissing

The flowers are leaving for Hollywood

Can’t you see we were made for the memory of the future?

Our eyes are wide

While our lives are wild

What part of town are you from?

The small part

The flooded part

The part that has the geraniums growing from the cracks in the concrete

What part would you like to be from?

There used to be rubies beneath this town

Right near the Latin Quarter

They were dug up and sold to the kings of Europe

Now they are dead and we have no Rubies

If all the stars fell today I know that you would not worry

Because you would be with him and you would be drunk

In each other’s arms

Arguing about the real life and times of Jake Gittes

You hear the sleeping men

To dream of other cities being torn apart

You know the real reason

You know why habit comes in daily form

The language is a real friend

And that steam floating from the kettle makes you happy

You try and stay awake, you try and straighten your back

What will it take to get you on a Greek island?

What will it take to take you below the bridge?

To show you the boat on which it all stopped

The Italian that talked of the colours

The colour of the sky during the fifth season

The colour of the water when the Chinese throw their tea over board

The Italian who touches your body with his perfection

Who shows you how to click your tongue from the roof of your mouth

You want to see if the human condition has become as frail as you think it should have

There below that bridge

Or if it has become as stubborn as a cactus out in the desert

The rag around your neck, it smells of wine and love

Your fingers smell of furs and blood

Your mother feels nothing but regret for her virtue

She thinks of it as she looks at the statues

They stand there all chipped

The figleafs all worn and smooth

And your father thinks of you sometimes

And then rubs his temples and looks to the sky

He’ll change the subject with time

A habit, he has, like a shake of the head

And the chemicals all sink to the bottom of the water

The organs all fill with air

You think of your Grandfather in his beret and blood

The birds fly over the top over you

They go over and on like life

Observing, yet untouched

And when the last memory has risen like a Geranium in autumn

To become a dream that haunts

To move in circles like the hands of time

And you only remember minor details like the colours of a wall against the backdrop

Or a feeling of changing topics to avoid confrontation

And in the background you can hear the animals

You can smell the snow

You can feel the breeze that blows

Where is the Poetry of the explorer? The words of Byron?

The words that detail the house full of ghosts

A galaxy exists in your dinner of pearls

You just want to see him naked

Playing down by the quarry

You want to see him eat the rocks of men

Lie down with me and I will tell you the story of being locked in the trunk of a car

Lie down with me and I will talk of the changing of sensation

The movement from illness to health

When it is just you beneath the sheet

I know you have your eyes closed

I know you are thinking of the super nova that has made you cry and exclaim

And tell the truth for the first time

Made you scream out and see the invisible soldiers

You could be the next dawn

Fill your womb with the black of night

Open your eyes and give me a sign

We ate the monkeys on our backs and carved our initials into the arms of the mayor of Utopia

The flower wilted

The fern unfurled

The fire flared

The time was a trial

You were his but he couldn’t tell

You were the prophet

Waiting for the light in your eyes to shine upon the mountains of Alexander

Who do you have left to greet on the side of the road

Who is left to see you with thumb hitched out at the wind?

Do you still live with your hair curling closely toward your collar?

Blue Eyes following beard every time you change direction?

Let’s get in a fight

Solve the mystery of our cocks without regret

Cut our hands and become blood brothers

Let’s fall down drunk as the sun comes up

Somewhere in a hall

In a house

On a hill

Fuck these mysteries

And everything we have to face

Do we have to face forward while reaching back?

Smoking cigarettes in the rain while pissing in the wind

You believe in sex, you believe in the strumming six stringed guitar, of the smell of Saturday night and judgment

You look forward to the Apocalypse

You know you will survive

You know you will be the first to learn to fly on the backs of the new monsters

To reintroduce the eunuchs

To bring back Negro transvestite monarchs

From out of the light walks a woman

She doesn’t remember being what she thinks she is

She can hear a voice in her head

Singing a little song about The Stars of Sport

She wanders out

Dew on her shoes and confusion on her face

Someday she will realize she had to go through what she went through to earn a place in the cemetery’s history

We want our drugs

And we want our hope

We need our voices, like diamonds, minced

I can hear the trumpets of war

I don’t know what angels god has left

I fear you are the last

That was a lie

You had to be lied to, you had to be told something that would leave you alone

Your mind is not like other people’s

Yours is a forest, a wild tangle, or even your own city, where amazing things take place…

I know you call it Geranium

Yeah, well pretty soon, the whole thing is going to burn or be washed out by a tidal wave…

You ask the sailor

The priest

The Latin Teacher

And the singer if they think it needs to be cleansed?

Whether it needs to or not

Geranium is gonna blow

It’s gonna break mid song and all the amazing shit that you have burning along those electricity wires within the town or growing on the vines of that jungle are gonna be set free

And I know you can’t wait

The world can’t afford you to

You found your own crossroads

A clean one

One that Satan didn’t know about

And you took your clothes off and sat in the middle

You called up the saints and Kennedy’s ghost

You could smell the perfume of Joplin

But there was no sign of Marx or his friend Cleopatra

You asked the Saints to march for you

You told them you were a little lost

The looked at you

They said ‘Go Right! And remember that stubborn cactus’

If we are going to be blue

Let’s go deeper and be blue together

Let’s go swimming and get caught in the weed

Let’s look for the ghost of the writer

Who told us of the lighthouse, strong in solitude?

Who got washed to the sea, and caught in the weed

It’s so hard to stay awake

Like it’s so hard to get involved in this

We were what we wanted, and what we should have been

And then time flaked the paint away

So throw the rotting plumbs toward the door of this parliament

Throw the rocks from the window of your crystal house

Yes I am sad as I watch you sleeping on the armchair

Your breath leaving your burdened lungs

But the seasons are changing and I know that soon soldiers will need me to bathe them in rivers blessed

Am I amazed at needing no sibling, shallow, envious, ignorant and fallen?

When the concern starts my mother will call

Blurriness is the first symptom, trembling hands the next

Leave the cat out for the nights eclipse

When will you learn that we need to lean on each other?

We are the last to ragged children left

The last two Geranium boys…